I joined Kiva.org Apr 11, 2007, after watching a special featuring microfinance on PBS. Kiva provides a way for lenders to meet entrepreneurs based on a variety of criteria: country, gender and/or type of work. I believe that it took a few days for Kiva to have enough entrepreneurs for all of us to fund, after all a PBS special has a wider audience than anticipated . When searching for loans to fund, I decided that where possible, I would fund women in Kenya. I later revised that plan to fund both men and women in Kenya, much needs to be done to encourage all Kenyans to find employment and funding half the population was a bit short-sighted. When I first joined, loans were funded completely and lenders waited until full repayment of loans were made before using the monies again. Basically, repayments sat in limbo in either Kiva’s account or the Kiva’s partner’s account. Two days ago, Kiva changed the policy and now immediately places repaid monies into lender accounts. I happily discovered a little over $27US in my account and a Kenyan man desiring a loan. So my account is happily empty again.

Anyone can create an account on their own or I can send an invite. I have no idea what an invite gets me, except a statistic on one of my pages and a nifty email sent out in my name:

I wanted to let you know about Kiva , a non-profit that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world.

You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay their loan, you get your money back. It’s a powerful and sustainable way to empower someone right now to lift themselves out of poverty.

Please keep in mind a couple of things: these loans are interest free from us and the lender assumes all responsibility for loss. Some interest is paid by the loanee to the field partner, but not to us as lenders. Kiva has a very low default rate because entrepreneurs are interviewed and selected on a very rigid criteria by trusted field partners, but it does happen. Of the four individuals I have loaned to, all belong to one of two field partner. Both organizations have a 0% default rate, but do have a higher delinquency rate. I believe this is because last November there was significant unrest in Kenya. All Kenyan lenders received a notice that due to the political instability of the region, loans were likely not to be repaid. Fortunately, many entrepreneurs were able to recover from their losses and continue their businesses. I cared very little about the loss of the monies, I desperately hoped they would recover and continue to provide for themselves and their families. If a lendee is unable to repay the loan, the monies are gone.

This graphic is a comparison of one of the field partner lenders in comparison to all Kiva field partners.

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Tags: kenya, kiva, loan, microfinance